Monday, June 21, 2010

Utah Vacation

We had a wonderful vacation to Utah this year. We were so happy to have Grandma and Grandpa Hooper with us, and Julee and Danny and kids for part of it too. We went to Navajo Bridge, Zion National Park, Provo, Temple Square, the Great Salt Lake, went to our adorable new nephew Wyatt's baby blessing, Drove the strip in Vegas, and took a few pictures at the Hoover dam. We survived and loved it all. The kids did great. They hiked so much, and didn't complain once. :) Our biggest disappointment was the lack of Carl's Jr restaurants along the way. (They are the ONLY fast food chain in our opinion). It was fun to get away and enjoy being together. Good times. Julee and Danny, Thanks so much for letting us hang out with you. You guys are so much fun. :)

Here is a few of our pictures from the trip. I was having difficulties loading the pictures, so we don't have it all. But that might get boring anyway...


Happy Father's Day

Happy Father's day to my sweet hubby! Here are a few thoughts about Ryan...

H-Helpful
A-Attitude, He has a great one
P-Patience, its a prerequisite at our house. :)
P-Phoenix Suns fan
Y-Yes, I'm super glad I married him!

F-Faithful
A-Active, always up for adventure
T-Tall, he reaches high things for me and never complains about it
H-HANDSOME
E-Eternity, that's how long he's ours
R-Reverent
S-Star Wars toys, he has some awesome ones, and he lets the kids play with them all. :)

D-Devoted
A-Attentive
Y-You are awesome, and we love you!!!!!

Thanks for being the best hubby and daddy!

Happy Birthday Seth

Our baby Seth is now two! I can't believe it. I didn't give him permission, but he is growing up anyways. We had a fun day with Seth for his birthday. Seth LOVES trains, so I made him a train birthday cake.
Here he is for his birthday breakfast...pop tarts.
Seth got a little train for his birthday. He loves it and carries it around with him EVERYWHERE we go. When we go swimming he leaves it in the car and brings a hot wheels car with him. Those trains are pricey...no taking them in the store, pool, or church...they'll just get lost. We had tons of hot wheels though, so that I don't mind. As soon as we get back in the car though he switches back to his train.

His birthday dinner was hot dogs. Here is his big ketchup grin.
The kiddos.
Since Seth is now the big 0-2, here are 2 fun facts about Seth...
1. Seth doesn't like it when someone is sleeping and he is awake. He will come up to you and tell you "wate-up!" if he sees you with eyes closed. Ryan learned this the hard way...He had dosed off in sacrament meeting, and when Seth noticed he said in a NOT reverent voice "Wate-up Dadda! until dadda woke up. Hee hee.
2. Seth LOVES planes and trains. Any sound we hear he will stop and make sure its not a train or and airplane before we can move on.
We love our little Seth. We didn't realize how big he was getting 'til we watched my little nephew Dax. Then he looked like a giant. Ryan and I both were shocked by how grown up he looked compared to an actual baby. That's ok though. We are thrilled he is doing well, and love having him in our family.

Back to Blogging

I took a little Blog Vacation, but hopefully I'm back on track for a while. (Well, if I can ever catch up). I'm just going to try to get us current again, so no fancy stuff and out of order pictures. Its faster that way. So here's what we've been up to...



Ryan has been super busy with work, but still finds time to be the best husband and dad ever. He has been on some exciting hikes and canyons lately. He has a huge one coming up next week. For pics and info on all of Ryan's canyoneering adventures see his fb photos. He keeps better track of them than I could.



I am still just very thankful to have survived May. That was one crazy month with Grantman's baptism, all the end of the year school stuff, and sharing times etc. It was awesome, but very busy. Summer is going well. It is fun to have the kids around. Its nice to know that my taxi services are still required several times a day. One of the highlights of Motherhood came a few weeks ago. It was the first time I took the kids swimming for the summer. As we were driving over to the pool, the kids were being over the top thankful and complimentary of me for taking them swimming. (We really like to build stuff up sometimes) :) Anyway, as we were getting out of the car and walking to the pool, Isaac and Grant started fighting about if I was young or beautiful. HA! I just let them fight, and enjoyed the moment. It may never happen again, but I won't forget it. Good times.



Olivia is doing great. She was invited to be a candidate for the team in gymnastics. She is now practicing with the team girls for over the summer, and they will test her at the end of the summer to see if she is ready to stay on the team. I'm super proud of her. It was a big adjustment to go to the long team workouts compared to her regular classes. She loves it though and is doing really well. I love that she has something that she has to really work HARD for. She has improved so much already. We are happy that she gets to be in the Honor Society and that she received so many academic awards for school. She is loving activity days, reading and swimming. Plus she helps me SO MUCH.



Grant is doing awesome as well. He loves his new set of scriptures he got for his eighth birthday. He has been busy marking them all up. :) Grant also did awesome in school. Now that he is a blue belt, his karate classes are getting so exciting. They are learning a new bow staff kata. It looks super cool. I will try and post a video when they learn it all. Grant is LOVING being in cub scouts. He has his book out all the time and is always working on something. He is determined to beat me in arm wrestling. I can still take him, but I will break a sweat doing it now. It won't be very long. YIKES!



Isaac is having a great summer so far. We went to his kindergarten graduation in May. He is a great student and we are super happy that he works hard in school. He is LOVING karate now too. (who knew little boys would love learning weapon katas??? hee hee) He is anxiously awaiting the arrival of his NUN CHUCKS. :) Last week he asked me if we could not be too busy that day because he needed to make time for his "Jedi training." I love how this little guy's mind works. Makes me happy. (yes, we had plenty of time for his Jedi training).



Seth is now two. I will post more on that later. Seth is in his first session of swimming lessons. So far he just screams the whole time. However when we are just playing at the pool I can do all the stuff with him from swimming lessons and he only freaks out over the back float. I can even dunk him and he doesn't get mad. So I know he is learning a little, I just feel bad for all the other parents and kids in our class. Sorry--maybe you should bring ear plugs. :) Seth is a talker. He surprises us all the time with the stuff he says. One of my favorites is that he rarely just says no. It is always no thank you. So sweet. We also love how he says strawberries. This is his favorite food, and he says it different every time. It usually has 5-7 syllables in it something like stradabedididies. The more excited he is about them, there is usually more syllables in it. He will also walk into a room and say hey, whats doe-ing on in here? When he is playing by himself, we will hear him pretend fighting with his toys: dive it back! no you dive it back! Oh sorry. Over and over. It makes us sad that he plays fighting. I guess we need to work on being a little nicer so Seth can hear more pleasant things to play about.



So far it has been a great summer. Nothing better than having extra time with the kiddos! These little ones are so much fun. I'm a super lucky mama!



Here are a few pics of the kids end of year things.

Isaac's kindergarten graduation

Olivia's recorder concert


Livvi and Grant after their Honor Choir Concert (Grant is catching up in height...zoinks!)


I missed getting to post on Mother's and Father's day. We just wanted to tell our moms and dads again how grateful we are to have you guys. We are so lucky to have awesome parents, and awesome grandparents for our kiddos. Thanks for always being there with advice, help, love, and patience. Love you!